Grave Sight Page 0,75

thought she despised. What she actually felt toward me was probably something closer to envy.

"You think so?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Harper," she said, and I realized she'd never spoken my name before, "what's going to happen to Tolliver?"

"Like I said, I called our lawyer. He gave me the name of an Arkansas attorney. She'll be here tomorrow. She's coming from Little Rock. She's going to appear at Tolliver's arraignment. I know she'll get him out."

"You fixed that up yourself?"

I nodded. "Sure."

"I couldn't do that," she said, subdued. "I wouldn't know how to begin."

I didn't want to sound like Ozark Granny Wisewoman, but I said, "You'll know when you need to."

"I liked Miss Helen," Mary Nell said, surprising me yet again.

"You told me that before," I said mildly. "I did, too. How well did you know her?"

"Well, she worked for us for a while. That's how Dell got to know Teenie. I mean, he knew who she was from school, because we all know each other, right? But he probably never would have spent time with her if Miss Helen hadn't worked at our house. That's how he got to know what she was really like. Then Miss Helen got to drinking so much she didn't get to work on time, and Mom had to let her go, and hired Mrs. Happ to help. But Dell and Teenie were sneaking off to see each other by then."

I'd heard pretty much the same thing from Hollis.

"Then Mr. Jay, Jay Hopkins, he beat Miss Helen up, and I heard my mom and Uncle Paul arguing about whether we should get Miss Helen back to work in the house. Uncle Paul said Miss Helen was sober and deserved a second chance, and Mom said after what she knew now, she wouldn't have Helen back in the house for love nor money. Especially love, she said."

"What do you think she meant by that?" I asked. With Mary Nell around, you wouldn't need a tape recorder.

"I have no idea," the girl answered. "I never did understand. I think my mom thought Miss Helen took something from her. But they wouldn't tell me." Familiar bitterness tinged her voice: the teenager vs. the adult world.

"Mary Nell, could you drop me back by my car?"

She sounded a little hurt when she told me she could.

I'd been too abrupt; but I had to think, and I knew Mary Nell would keep on talking as long as I was available to be her audience.

Once I was by myself, I felt both visible and vulnerable. I drove to my motel by the most direct route and shut myself in the damn room with the damn green bedspread. I had no messages. I couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. My leg was tingling, as it sometimes did, and I peeled off my jeans and rubbed the skin, with its fine tracery of purple spiderwebs. Cameron had called me Spiderwoman for a while, before we'd figured out that the branching lines weren't going away. My stepfather had been fond of ordering me to show the leg to his friends.

Hollis never mentioned it. Maybe he didn't understand it was lightning-related. Maybe he thought it was a birthmark of some kind and didn't want to hurt my feelings.

I lay down on the bed. SO MO DA NO, I thought. It might almost be the chorus to a Caribbean song. Okay. Reverse it. ON AD OM OS. NO DA MO SO. Dams, moon, soon, mad, mono, moans, nomad. Damon, doom, moods. Amos. Samoa? Nope, only one A. Why one A? Every other phrase ended with O.

Okay, what if the second letter was some... condition? What if the first letters stood for names? S could be for Sybil, D for Dell, N for... oh, Mary Nell had said her dad had called her Nelly. That could be N. But then, who was M? No one's name started with M, that I could recall. D could be for Dick Teague, if not Dell.

For the first time, I wished that I could ask questions of the dead. I could only take what they gave me. They gave me a picture of their deaths. They gave me what they'd been feeling at the moment. But they never told me why, or who, just how.

A bullet in my back... an infection in my lungs... my heart stuttered and quit pumping... I was just too old and worn out... the car hit so hard... the fall was from